Monthly Archives: April 2016

It’s amazing to look at something that (or someone who) bothers me as if they aren’t actually something or someone *other* than me. Like looking in a mirror, where it’s clear I’m not looking at a separate thing or being… I’m looking at my self. And suddenly the thought comes, “Good grief, it’s not like I can change what’s in the mirror without changing what’s looking at the mirror, can I?” Head slap.

Life never ceases reflecting, something, to us. Kinda like the penny arcade, where we shoot down a little duck as it floats by – a feeling of instant gratification, “Aaahhh” – and then poof, another one pops up. We can learn to love the duckies, to embrace the reflections, cause that’s what here. It’s all just One Being disguised as things and people defined in various ways as “Others.”

When the burden of being bothered by “others” falls away, life is light. Every … thing … is a gift, a present, a great blessing.

Surrender happens when all the fight leaves you, either in one fell swoop or slowly, over apparent ‘time’. It is then that you realize the truth of the statement, “What you resist persists.” Because suddenly, or slowly (in hindsight) you see that you have been resisting, and you recognize that all that you were resisting persisted. Surrender doesn’t always, nor necessarily even remove that which you were resisting, but without resistance, what is is no longer viewed as a problem, even if what is was viewed as a persistent problem… ‘before’ you surrendered.

The mind wants to hear that if you surrender, that if you just accept what is, then all the stuff you’ve been resisting falls away. And a lot of it might, maybe even all of it. But don’t count on that, because that little speck of hope that the stuff you don’t want to deal with in your life will just go away…? That’s resistance to the stuff you don’t want to deal with. It rubs. That stuff… persists in rubbing you, like a grain of sand in your shoe.

So how do you deal with all the stuff you don’t want to deal with? The first step is to notice that you don’t want to deal with it… that’s like opening your eyes to what you don’t want to see and taking your fingers out of your ears cause you don’t want to hear. It all comes down to the choice – you can fight, try to flee, push away, or open your arms, eyes, heart and mind to what’s here, now. There’s a message in what is, and it’s just for you. If you don’t catch it this time, don’t worry, it’ll come around again.

In believing that you must ‘experience’ stillness, you create an image of what it will look like, feel like, be like, and then look for that experience. You seek, to “Be still and awaken” – as an experience.

Stillness is ‘here’, always. It’s never not here, even when it isn’t noticed by the busy mind. It is not an experience. It’s what experience arises ‘in’ … even if what arises appears to be the noticing of stillness or lack of noticing of stillness.

When attention turns away from the noticing of experience (any experience), stillness is evident as the canvas upon which experience arises, the space in which experience appears to happen. But it is not, itself, an experience.

When you stop believing the mind’s story that it’s too damn busy and start noticing its busy-ness, then attention starts to disentangle itself from that busy-ness. It isn’t the mind that notices how busy it is, but it is the mind that judges that busy-ness.

THAT which animates all is stillness. THAT within which animation appears to occur is stillness. Whether aware of itself or not, THAT is ever-present. Without THAT, experiencing, noticing, and even busy-ness would not exist.

In the midst of all that appears to be wrong – there is, in fact, nothing wrong. There is only, ever, what IS – appearing/unfolding – moment-to-moment. Sure, one can argue with Reality, but guess who (or what) wins that argument? Reality. Not sometimes. Always. 100% of the time. Reality is never wrong. It’s not right either. It just IS.